The ones that never were

Coming complementary with my Kubrick box set was the Kubrick HBO doc and in it, his wife expresses Stanley's regret of not being able to make more movies. I know he had some in the pipeline like AI and his holocaust movie (title?) but what else did he have, and why didnt it get made?

The most famous is the Napolean movie he started to make in 1969 but lost financing when a movie on Napolean was released at the time and tanked at the box office so his financers got scared and backed out.

Also, there was the adaptation of the horror novel, Perfume: A Story of a Murderer, in the early 1980s that would have kinda mixed ideas of A Clockwork Orange with the horror of The Shining.

He wanted to adapt a holacaust novel in the late 1950s called Burning Secret.

There was also a biography on a female writer of the early 1900s, the name of her eludes me at the moment though.

Another was the very very very ambitious science fiction novel called Foucault's Pendulum, which was the tale of three editors who had read too many manuscripts based on ideas of fanatics and decided to have some fun and rewrite history to how a fanatic would have seen it. This came about in the late 1980s but talks didn't go through as the author of the book wanted to write the screenplay himself.

Also, in the early 1980s, Kubrick toyed with the idea of doing what would become Schindler's List, but he dropped the project.

in 1960, he almost directed Marlon's Brando's western, One Eyed Jacks, but Brando opted to direct it himself.

He had locations scouted for the shooting, someone agreeing to play Napolean and consensus was that it likely would have been Jack Nicholson and also had oxford students hired for looking into the history of Napolean, basically getting every single fact they could find of him, doesn't matter how trivial. Kubrick also searched the globe for different artifacts on Napolean and even was as lucky to obtain his death mask. Also reports he had an army of a country hired to play extras, but i am not confident which country though i want to say belguim's or some other country in that area. So basically, they were well into pre production and near ready to begin shooting.

And a great fact is that when it was all said and done, Kubrick had amassed the greatest library on Napolean in the world just in his personal collection, collecting over 18,000 books on him. It was basically the subject Kubrick wanted to film most of any movie he did or didn't make.

What about Kubrick's A.I.? I've heard rumors that he was holding off on this because he wanted an actual robot to play David

Also, at one point, I don't know if it was before or after the animated films, but well before the existence of good computer effects, and when Peter Jackson was going through puberty, Kubrick had been offered to direct The Lord of the Rings. He declared that the books were "unfilmable," or something to that extent.

He was holding off A.I. due to reasons that he wanted to wait for computer technology to advance. His plans was to begin filming A.I. right after completion of Eyes Wide Shut. There are rumors though, that Kubrick never really did complete the story for A.I., that he never found the story he really wanted to film. There is some truth to this in all the different science fiction writers he went through in trying to collabarate and all the unsuccesses. And then there is the starting point of what he concieved the story to be, in that it would be a focus on three different natural elements: fire, water and ice. The finished product, by Speilberg, feels like an ode to the life career of Kubrick with how so many different things in the film feel like they are borrowed from a previous Kubrick film so there definitely may be more truth to this than possible.

In the late 1960s, the Beatles approached Kubrick to adapt Lord of the Rings into a movie and he declined calling it "unfilmmable."

There is one project though, that I hear faint things about right after he died, that I never heard of any since. All I remember from the rumor is that Kubrick, in inspiration from Kieslowski, was going to write, or help adapt, or help finance a french movie that was going to be made. The story was said to be a very basic one dealing with just today's world and was said to be inspired by Kiewslowski films. I completely forget the storyline, but I remember it was a story and project Kubrick had his name to.

~rougerum

Cecil

i think that the whole "a.i." thing is a conspiracy. a lie created by spielberg to take over kubricks project without being called a thief. i think kubrick inteaded to make this film when the technology had advanced enough to his liking, not told spielberg that he should make it cause its more his "type of movie." but then he, well... he unfortunately left this world. spielberg then didnt skip a beat by moving in on his project. who knows, maybe spielberg is even responsible for kubricks... MURDER. yeah i said it. spielberg STOLE a.i. from kubrick.

That reminds me of a great April Fools scoop from Coming Attractions. Raja Gosnell, director of Scooby Doo, claimed that he had received authorization from Kubrick before his death to remake 2001 with Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze, Jr.

On a more serious note, has anyone read Brian Aldiss' original short story that inspired AI? It's great.